Bring Your Daughter To Work Day
by yangosplat
Summary: My twist on the 'classic' per se "what happened to Caroline/Chell on Bring Your Daughter To Work Day 1998" story.
1. Chapter 1

Caroline lay in her bed on the fateful day, when the door burst open.

"Mommy!" her daughter Chell cried. "Get up! It's 6:30! You're bringing me to Bring Your Daughter To Work Day today, right?"

Caroline smiled. At 9 years she showed all the exuberance of her father.

"I'm coming, Chell," she replied, still half asleep. "Go pick out your clothes and grab a potato from the fridge. I'll be right down."

Chell ran out of the room and pounded down the stairs.

Caroline walked into the kitchen, fully dressed. Chell held in her hands a potato and was dressed in her tiny little Aperture uniform she'd demanded to get from the gift store.

"Oh, Chell," she chuckled. "You look like a test subject! It's perfect!"

Chell giggled. "I'm excited! I'm going to make the best potato battery! I practiced already!"

Caroline laughed again and picked her daughter up, sweeping her into her arms. "Of course you will, honey. Of course you will!"

Chell giggled excitedly again. "And today, I get to see Mommy become a robot! Yay!"

Putting her down, she said, "But robots can't hug you! Come on out to the car. I have your trifold board."

As Chell opened the door and ran out happily, Caroline let her tears fall. It would be the last time she embraced her child.


	2. Chapter 2

"All right, have fun!" Caroline said, leading Chell and her potato into the room.

"Bye Mommy! I'll make the BEST potato battery!" she responded, grinning like the innocent young girl she was.

Caroline waved to her daughter and walked out the door, leaving Chell to pick up her poster board, which was almost as big as her, and sit on the benches with the other children.

One of the Aperture employees, Greg, walked into the room purposefully; behind him was a happy but somewhat timid young man of about eighteen with a smile on his face.

"Hi girls!" he exclaimed. "Welcome to Bring Your Daughter To Work Day! Are you all ready to make your projects?"

Chell chorused "Yes!" with the rest of them.

He continued, "Well, good, because you're going to have lots of fun today. I'm Greg, and I'll be helping you today, along with Doug here."

Doug waved to the young girls, and Greg continued. "Well, if you want to get started, pick a place on these tables behind me, and get going! We're going to do some science!"

They cheered and got up, swarming the tables for a spot.

Caroline strode down the hall, the clacking of her heels matching the pounding of the blood in her ears. She opened a door to the inner workings of Aperture, dodging the flying Weighted Storage Cubes and the low-hanging gel pipes, and entered a circular chamberlock, resting her arms on the railing.

Her hands, hanging off the edge of the railing, were shaking ever so slightly.

Chell stuck the last wire into her potato and admired the way her yellow LED lit up. Scribbling something on her worksheet, she took a picture of the setup.

Doug turned the corner and wandered up to her battery, then stopped in surprise.

"You figured it out by yourself!" he said. "Without anyone's help!"

Chell grinned widely and giggled.

Doug lowered his voice and pulled out a vial from his pocket.

"Hey, do you want to know a secret? It'll make this battery even better."

Chell accepted and he continued. "I've got some acid here. It's supposed to be secret Aperture stuff, but you can handle it, right?"

Pulling one of her wires out, he dipped it in the strange liquid and stuck it back in the potato. The light became slightly brighter.

Chell giggled. "That's cool!" she said, in the high-pitched voice of a young girl.

Doug carefully placed the vial on the table, next to Chell's project. "It's actually supposed to react with Aperture neurotoxin and make a potato fertilizer. But it also conducts electricity."

He walked on and Chell excitedly started pulling out her other wires and coating them with the acid.


	3. Chapter 3

"So these are the prints of the brain scans we took last week."

Caroline was hunched over a stack of papers with a few other lab scientists, all wearing lab coats with the Aperture logo printed on them.

"We're confident we can get it done perfectly," the head scientist continued. "We have all the parts connected completely, and we're ready to roll."

They got up and wheeled the reclined chair out, with a complicated network of wires and sensors hooked up to a head brace. Caroline sat in the chair and the four scientists got to work hooking up the wires to her head.

Two of them stayed outside to monitor the switch, while the other two entered a side stairway and reappeared a moment later in the window to the control room above.

They pressed a few buttons up on top and the announcer took over.

"_AI transfer pending. Data confirmation complete. Mapping complete. Are the presiding officials ready_?"

This was an easy yes for the scientists.

"_Is the subject ready_?"

The two scientists standing down below whispered, "Say yes!" in Caroline's ear. But she ignored them.

"I'm not actually so sure, though. I don't know if I'm ready," she said shakily. "I-I don't want to leave yet!"

The announcer continued, "_Interpreting answer as no. Stalemate detected. Transfer procedure cannot continue unless a trained stalemate associate is present to press the stalemate resolution button_."

The scientist on Caroline's left volunteered and ran up to the alcove in the wall.

Caroline tried to sit up, but the wires prevented her from moving her head.

"No!" she yelled, tossing aside her normally composed demeanor. She pulled at the brace, fumbling with the buckles, but could not dislodge her head. "It's too soon!"

From above, the man in control of the panel played a prerecorded message.

"_I will say this, and I'm gonna say it on tape so everyone hears it 100 times a day: If I die before you people can pour me into a computer, I want Caroline to run this place. Now she'll argue, she'll say she can't—she's modest like that. But you make her! Hell, put her in my computer. I don't care._"

As the message came on, Caroline abruptly stopped struggling and tears welled up in her eyes. The scientist standing at the button told her, "It's what Cave would've wanted."

"Okay," she sobbed. "But…I'm still not doing it…not leaving her behind…my precious…"

The young scientist at the button looked worried, and for the first time, she saw through his face. Behind the strong adult, trained for five years in laboratory techniques and the pursuit of science, behind his maturity was the same young boy that she'd visited in the Aperture nursery, so many years ago.

_Everyone_, she thought. _Everyone here was once a kid._

And after a little deliberating, she thought, _including myself_.

The announcer reawakened, as the button was finally depressed. Torn, the young scientists walked away from the button, averting his eyes from Caroline's liquid brown gaze.

"_Stalemate resolved_."

The robotic arms began to move above her, and Caroline started to scream again.


End file.
